Unexpected Protector

by Justine Davis

  “All right,” Noel replied in an accommodating tone. “We keep a large amount of cash in our safe for instant sales. We need the dogs to guard the place, keep people from trying to break in and help themselves to it. The dogs, Hans and Fisher,” he said, making the two sound more like favored employees rather than guard dogs, “were trained specifically to guard the safe.” Noel’s grin widened. “I can give you a little demonstration if you’d like.”

  He had no desire to watch a demonstration, not with Justice at his side. If the other dogs showed any sign of aggression, too much could go wrong.

  “No, for now your explanation is good enough for me,” he told Noel. Although he couldn’t help wondering why the dogs had been purchased, given Evan’s obvious fear of German shepherds. Something wasn’t adding up.

  “Great. Anything else?” Noel asked, making it sound as if he had all the time in the world to spare for the detective.

  “Yes.” He waited a moment before continuing. “Serena Colton said she saw you riding around on her property earlier. Mind telling me why?”

  “Don’t mind at all,” Noel said. “We’re thinking of buying a ranch for ourselves and just wanted to take a look at one of the more successful ranches in the area.” Noel flashed two rows of perfect teeth at him.

  “And that’s it?”

  “That’s it,” Noel told him, “Except I think that we must have spooked her. Didn’t mean to, of course. Anything else?” he asked.

  “Not right now,” Carson answered. Holding firmly on to Justice’s leash, he nodded at the two brothers and took his leave.

  “Well, if you think of anything, you know where to find us,” Noel called after him cheerfully.

  I sure as hell do, Carson thought, walking out.

  Chapter 8

  As he drove back to the police station, Carson went over the interview he had just conducted several times in his mind just in case he’d missed something.

  Without a doubt, Noel and Evan Larson had to be the friendliest, seemingly accommodating cold-blooded criminals he’d ever had the misfortune of dealing with—and he didn’t believe a single word that had come out of either one of their mouths.

  There was something about the so-called charming duo, something he couldn’t put his finger on just yet, but if the Larsons swore on a stack of bibles that something was true, he was more than willing to go out of his way to find the evidence that proved that it was false, because as sure as night followed day, it was.

  He didn’t think the two were capable of telling the truth if their very lives depended on it.

  “I suppose that feeling that way doesn’t exactly make me impartial, does it, Justice?” Carson asked, addressing the question to the German shepherd riding beside him. “Maybe the problem is that there’re too many people willing to give those two a free pass. Too many people trying to get on their good side because they think that ingratiating themselves to the Larsons might get them to be part of their cushy world.”

  The real problem in this matter, Carson decided, was that he had no idea if what the Larsons were involved in had anything to do with Bo’s death at all or if the two were mutually exclusive of one another. What he did know was that he wanted to find Bo’s killer and he wanted to put the Larson brothers behind bars.

  But that very possibly could be two very separate things.

  Focus, he ordered himself. Focus.

  He needed to find Bo’s killer and then he could get back to the business of putting the Larsons behind bars, where they belonged.

  One step at a time.

  Finding Bo’s killer brought him back to trying to find Demi. The woman wasn’t exactly a shrinking violet in any sense of the term and she just couldn’t have disappeared into thin air.

  Someone had to have seen her, talked with her, something.

  Determined to locate the bounty hunter and confront her with the additional evidence they’d found to see how she explained her way out of that, Carson decided to go back to the beginning and question some of the people Demi had interacted with. That would help him piece together her timeline for the day that Bo was murdered.

  He hadn’t managed to even get his seat warm at the station before one of the other K-9 cops held their landline receiver up in the air, calling out to get his attention.

  “Hey, Gage, someone’s asking to talk to you. Says it’s about that missing redheaded bounty hunter,” Joe Walker called out.

  He’d already got a few crank calls, as well as a couple from people just looking for information about the investigation. These days, every third person with access to a computer fancied themselves a journalist.

  He made no effort to pick up the phone. “Who is it?” Carson wanted to know.

  “They won’t say,” Walker said. “Just want to talk to you. Line three,” he prompted, wiggling the receiver.

  With a sigh, Carson picked up his receiver and punched Line Three. “Gage,” he announced.

  “Carson Gage?” the raspy voice on the other end asked.

  It was someone trying to disguise their voice and doing a very obvious job of it, Carson thought impatiently. He didn’t have time for this. “Yes. Who am I talking to?”

  “My name doesn’t matter,” the voice on the other end said. Carson was about to hang up when he heard the voice say, “All you need to know is that I work at the Double C Ranch and I just saw Demi Colton running from one of the barns. The one where the studio apartments are kept. You know, the ones the ranch hands live in.”

  He was a born skeptic. Still, he stayed on the line. “You just saw her?” Caron questioned.

  “Less than fifteen minutes ago,” the voice told him. Then, as if reading his mind, the caller said, “Look, you can believe me or not, but I saw what I saw and I heard you were looking for that Colton woman so I’m calling it in. Do what you want with it.”

  “What did you say your name was again?” Carson asked, trying to get the caller to slip up.

  “I didn’t.”

  The line went dead.

  He dropped the receiver into its cradle. The call could have very well just been a hoax, someone trying to get him to chase his tail for the sheer perverse fun of it.

  But on the other hand, Carson felt that he couldn’t afford to ignore it, either. He needed to check out this latest so-called “tip.”

  “I’m going back to the Double C Ranch,” Carson told the detective sitting closest to him just in case the chief came looking for him.

  Immersed in a report he was wading through on his desk, Emilio Sanchez raised an inquisitive eyebrow. “Got something?”

  “I sure as hell hope so,” was all Carson was willing to share at the moment as he walked out of the squad room. Justice quickly followed him out.

  * * *

  Serena was just coming out of the stables, talking to one of the horse trainers who worked for her when she saw Carson driving up. Her first thought was that the detective was coming back because he had something to tell her about the Larsons.

  “I’ll talk to you later, Juan,” she said to the trainer. With her eyes riveted on Carson’s approaching vehicle, she hurried toward it.

  She saw that, despite the cold weather, the window on his side was partially down. “I didn’t expect you to be back so soon,” Serena told him as she walked up to the driver’s side.

  “That makes two of us,” Carson answered. He turned off the ignition.

  Was he waiting for her to pry the information out of him? “So? What did you find out?” Serena asked impatiently.

  The woman was standing right up against his door, inadvertently preventing him from opening it. Carson indicated the door with his eyes, waiting.

  Annoyance creasing her forehead, Serena stepped back, allowing him to open the door and get out. Justice was right behind him and came bounding out of the driver’s side.

&nb
sp; If she thought he was here to fill her in on how his meeting with the Larsons went, she was in for a big surprise, Carson thought.

  “I found out that you weren’t being entirely truthful with me,” he said, thinking of the call he’d taken about Demi’s sighting. The call that was responsible for his being here.

  Her eyes narrowed to brown slits as she glared at Carson. “What are you talking about? What did those lying snakes tell you?”

  What was she talking about? “Come again?”

  She bit back the urge to tell him to keep up. “The Larson brothers. What delusional story did they try to sell you?”

  “The Larsons?” he echoed. Why would his saying that she hadn’t been entirely truthful make her think of the Larsons? Was there a reason she’d pointed him in their direction?

  Was the detective deliberately playing dumb? She was beginning to think that the German shepherd was the smart one of the pair.

  “Yes, the Larsons,” she said evenly. “Didn’t you come back to tell me how your meeting with them went?”

  Well, she obviously thought a lot of herself, Carson thought, irritated. “No. I’m here because someone from the Double C just called the police station to say that they saw Demi, not fifteen minutes ago, running from one of the studio apartments you have for the ranch hands.” He pinned her with a very cold look. “You lied to me, Ms. Colton.”

  Serena’s temper flared. “I didn’t lie to you and seeing as how you keep insulting my integrity, why don’t we just drop the polite ‘Ms. Colton’ act, shall we?” she snapped.

  Maintaining a respectful air came naturally to him, but given the situation, it was apparently lost on this woman.

  “Fine by me, Serena.” He deliberately enunciated her name.

  “Well, none of this is ‘fine by me,’” Serena retorted. “And doesn’t it strike you as odd that someone who has a perfectly reliable vehicle the way, I’m sure you know, that Demi does is always being spotted ‘running’ around?” She blew out a breath trying to tamp down her temper. “This is all getting very tiresome, Carson,” she said, calling him by his first name and saying it through clenched teeth. “Please leave.”

  He had no intention of doing anything of the sort. “Sorry, I can’t do that. Not until I’ve searched the barns and surrounding area for Demi.”

  Serena fisted her hands at her waist, ready to go toe-to-toe with him. “And if I tell you that you can’t?” she challenged.

  Carson took a folded piece of paper out of his pocket, opened it and held it up for her to look at. “This warrant says I can.”

  Fuming, Serena unceremoniously took the warrant from him and scanned it.

  “Meet with your approval?” he asked when she folded the paper and handed it back to him.

  “No,” Serena snapped. None of this met with her approval. “But it is a warrant,” she conceded. “So I guess I can’t stop you. But you’re wasting your time,” she informed him. “Demi’s still not here. Whoever called you is sending you on a wild-goose chase. So—”

  Serena stopped talking suddenly, her head whipping around to look over her shoulder toward something she thought she heard.

  Justice was straining at his leash. Obviously whatever it was, the dog had heard it, too, so this wasn’t just an act on Serena’s part, he thought.

  “What?” he asked her in a hushed voice.

  But she didn’t answer him. Instead Serena hurried around the side of what had initially been one of the barns on the original ranch, before the ranch had been renovated and expanded.

  He read Serena’s body language. Something definitely had the horse breeder going, he thought as he and Justice followed her.

  He was fairly certain that she was not attempting to lead them to corner Demi, but there was no arguing that Serena was after someone.

  Someone she apparently was keenly interested in confronting.

  Carson caught her by the arm before she got away from him. When she tried to pull free, he just tightened his hold. Serena glared at him.

  “Who are you trying to corral?” he wanted to know.

  “My sister,” she hissed, annoyed that he was intervening and getting in her way.

  Serena tried to pull free again with the same results. The only way this ape was going to let go of her was if she answered his question. So, unwillingly, she did.

  “I think the Larsons are trying to get their hooks into Valeria.” The second he released her, she made her way around the barn and looked into the first window she could. “She’s impressionable and flighty and,” she continued, moving to the next window, “with your brother!”

  Rapping her knuckles against the window to get their attention, she didn’t stop until the two people on the bed finally separated and looked her way.

  The two had been so completely wrapped around one another that had it not been for the different colors of their clothing, it would have been hard to distinguish where all their separate limbs began and ended.

  Trying the door, Serena found it unlocked and stormed in. Carson followed behind her just as Justice got past him and got in between the two younger people.

  “Vincent?” Carson cried. The last person he expected to find in this compromising position with a Colton was his youngest brother.

  Startled at being discovered as well as suddenly having a German shepherd getting in between them and wagging his tail in a display of friendly recognition, Valeria and Vincent instantly pulled apart and were up on their feet.

  The two looked somewhat disheveled, not to mention disoriented and embarrassed. At least Vincent was. The nineteen-year-old mechanic had got a job working part-time on the Double C, fixing not just some of the cars but also other, larger mechanical devices on the ranch.

  He was not, Carson thought, supposed to be giving the boss’s daughter the same sort of close scrutiny he gave the vehicles he repaired.

  Vincent gulped and finally found his tongue. “Carson, what are you doing here?”

  “Thinking about spraying water on the two of you,” Carson answered, frowning.

  Incensed, Valeria immediately spoke up, turning her anger on her sister. “Hey, you have no right to be spying on us. We’re both over eighteen and we can do whatever we want,” she cried.

  Serena didn’t see it that way. “Are you out of your mind?” Serena demanded. “You know the way Dad feels about Vincent’s father, how he feels about the whole Gage family,” she emphasized. “If he catches the two of you going at it like two rabbits in heat, he’ll string Vincent up without a second thought.”

  Valeria raised her chin, ready to protect this precious romance she was involved in. “He’d have to go through me to do it!” she declared defiantly, her eyes blazing.

  “Don’t think for a minute that he won’t,” Serena retorted. “Nothing is more important to that man than the ideas of family honor—and Dad puts that ‘honor’ above all of us.”

  Valeria became angrier if that was possible. “I don’t care what’s important to him,” she insisted. “Vincent is important to me,” she said, reaching for his hand.

  The youngest of the Gage clan closed his hand around hers.

  “And you don’t have to worry and carry on about honor,” Valeria continued. “Vincent and I are getting married on Christmas Eve.” She shared a smile with him before turning back toward her sister and Vincent’s big brother. “That happens to be Vincent’s birthday and it’s mine, too,” she told them. “That makes the date doubly special. We’ll both be turning twenty that day,” she added as if that fact somehow added weight to what they were planning.

  Ignoring the man next to her, Serena made a valiant attempt to talk some sense into her sister. “Valeria, you’re both too young to make such a life-altering decision at this stage.”

  “For once,” Carson interjected, “I agree with Serena.”

 
Valeria tossed her head and looked at her sister, totally ignoring the detective. This was between her sister and her. “Seems to me that a woman with a baby and no husband shouldn’t be lecturing us on what we should or shouldn’t do,” she said dismissively.

  Carson saw the flash of hurt in Serena’s eyes. No one was more surprised than he was when he felt something protective stir within him.

  “Tossing insults at your sister,” he told Valeria coldly, “doesn’t change the fact that what you are contemplating doing is foolhardy, and it’s opening the two of you up to a real flood of anger—coming at you from both families.”

  “But, Carson, it’s a really stupid feud,” Vincent protested.

  “I’m not arguing that,” Carson granted. “It’s beyond stupid. Half the members of both families can’t even remember how the whole damn thing got started or what it’s even about. Hell, I’m not even sure. Near as I can tell, it was something about land issues that had our grandfathers at each other’s throats, or so the story goes according to our father,” he said, nodding at Vincent. “But it doesn’t matter how it got started. What matters is that it’s still going on and if you two go through with what you’re planning, that damn feud is probably going to escalate. So, if I were you two,” Carson said, looking from one to the other, “I’d hold off getting married for a while.”

  “Well, you’re not us,” Vincent told his brother, putting a protective arm around Valeria as if to signify that it was the two of them against the world if that’s what it took for them to get married.

  Valeria looked at Carson. “And just how long is ‘a while’?” she demanded hotly. She had her hand on her hip, the very picture of a woman who was not about to change her mind no matter what.

  “As long as it takes to get our families to come around,” Serena answered. She knew that was vague, but there was no way to put a timetable on getting the two families to reconcile.

  Valeria shook her head. The answer was unacceptable.